Inside the high-stakes mating season of an hourglass tree frog

During the rainy season in Costa Rica, the Hourglass Tree Frog makes it way from the canopy treetops, down to the forest floor in a dangerous quest to find a meal. My name is Filipe DeAndrade, and I'm a National Geographic Wildlife Filmmaker. It looks like one of the alpha males and then a juvenile male. My passion for animals has taken me across the world and given me a deep appreciation for this earth. For Season Two of Untamed, we'll be exploring one of the most biologically diverse countries in the world, Costa Rica. Costa Rica is home to around half a million different species of plants and animals. And for most of the creatures that live here, night time is when things really get going. The Hourglass Tree Frog is a young male just coming into adulthood. His incredible eyes give him the advantage of being able to see in almost complete darkness. But at just one inch in length, he's a little frog in a big world. Falling from this height up in the canopy almost ensures his death. He's on the move for a very important reason. It's his first mating season, and he's in search of a female. But before he can find her, the conditions have to be just right. In a single year, some areas of Costa Rica can experience twenty-five feet of rainfall, and not only have the animals in this rainforest found ways to deal with these conditions, they have evolved to thrive in them. All this water creates temporary ponds on the forest floor, the perfect setting for these frogs to breed. But before any of that can happen, he first has to find a willing female, and he has competition. A lot of competition. Amongst the deafening calls of all these mates, he's trying to be the loudest and the brightest. This is the game of stamina, and with some persistence he might just get lucky. The silhouette of en elusive female, it's a promising sight for this young bachelor. But she's already taken. In this case, experience beats out enthusiasm. He is deflated, but continues his search, and luckily for him, he caught the attention of another female. Seeing that she is without a mate, he decides to move closer, engage her interests, and she responds by inching closer. They will mate in the privacy of the forest. The end result is a successful breeding season. All these tadpoles that he helped create, in a massive universe, this tiny Hourglass Tree Frog contributed to the preservation of his species.